Thursday, December 29, 2016

Happy Birthday, Andy Summers!

On Saturday,
December 31, 2016,
Andy Summers – my favorite guitarist and musician of all time –
turns 74 years
old.

I
first became acquainted with the music of Summers in 1983 at the age
of 10 in a Catholic elementary school classroom when I heard a
hypnotic and futuristic-sounding pop/rock song emanating from the
radio of Candy, my substitute teacher. When I asked what the song was
and who recorded it, I was promptly informed that it was “Spirits
in the Material World” by The Police. I was instantly hooked, so
much so that that Christmas, my parents got me a vinyl copy
of Synchronicity, The Police’s fifth and final
studio album and one of the biggest hits of the year. The Police have
since remained my favorite rock band of all time.

Summers
was the guitarist for the mega-popular group, who were active in the
late 1970s and early 1980s and reunited for a 30th anniversary tour
in 2007 and 2008. Being a good decade older than his bandmates Sting
and Stewart Copeland, Summers began his professional recording career
in the early 1960s, playing for Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band (which
later became the psychedelic but short-lived Dantalian’s Chariot),
Eric Burdon’s New Animals, and Soft Machine. After formally
studying guitar at Northridge University in California from the late
1960s to the early 1970s, Summers returned to England and plied his
trade as a session guitarist for Joan Armatrading, Neil Sedaka, Kevin
Coyne, and Deep Purple’s Jon Lord before achieving monumental
success and international stardom with The Police.

After
the dissolution of The Police in the early 1980s, Summers scored some
Hollywood films (Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Weekend at
Bernie’s) and recorded one rock vocal album before
establishing himself as an acclaimed and accomplished contemporary
instrumental guitarist across a variety of styles, including jazz,
fusion, New Age, and world music.

I
was privileged to interview Summers by telephone in Fall 2000 for the
January 2001 issue of DirecTV: The Guide. I was
pleasantly surprised when I discovered that Summers posted a notice
of the interview in the news section of his Web site. Later, I met
Summers in person during his book tour in Fall 2006, just a few
months before The Police reunited for a 30th anniversary reunion
tour, which I was fortunate to attend twice in August of 2007 and
2008.